A life-long champion of equal rights in the workplace, retired IBEW Business Manager Robbie Sparks has left an indelible mark on our union movement. Her passion for workers’ rights and civil rights advanced the causes of social, economic and political justice at the workplace and in the community. As an original member, and later president, of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus, Sparks sought to ensure that all workers could fully participate in their union. Her work provided education, training and understanding that would open a path for women and people of color in union leadership at the local and national levels.
The first of eight children in a working-class Georgia family, Sparks grew up under the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the segregated South and from childhood was determined to help create a more egalitarian society. Sparks, who began working at an early age at a poultry processing plant where she earned pennies per hour, went on to join forces with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. James Orange and other giants of the civil rights movement. Her hard work and tenacity led to her election as vice president of the Atlanta Labor Council, vice president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and as business manager/president of IBEW Local 2127, where she held office for 28 years.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council thanks Robbie Sparks for her many contributions to civil rights, to the labor movement, to her union and to this council.